“In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis,” said former Vice President Al Gore in a speech at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.

I would tend to believe just about anything Al said and, according to a recent Wired article, Mr. Gore says that “68 percent of Americans now believed that human activity was responsible for global warming, and 69 percent believed the Earth was heating up in a significant way. But this, along with buying hybrids and installing solar panels, wasn’t enough.”

Changing light bulbs won’t do it either, he said. We needs to change are laws. And in order to accomplish this, we need urgency. Which means we need help from the media.

“[Gore] showed slides listing the number of questions that broadcast media outlets posed to presidential candidates last year about the climate crisis. NBC’s top journalists asked 956 questions of the candidates, but only two of them were about the climate crisis. ABC journalists asked 844 questions; two of which were about the crisis. Fox and CNN also asked two questions on the topic, and CBS had asked none, he said.”

Demanding changes is not unreasonable, said the former VP. And our country has the resources to make it — roughly a week’s worth of Iraq war budget should be enough — but our politicians need to give the okay to access the resources. Which they won’t do unless the public demands it. With help from the media.

To help ensure that public demands are appropriately expressed in the upcoming election, the Al Gore-founded Alliance for Climate Protection will be launching a major campaign to educate and enlighten the voters between now and November to help create a public movement that forces politicians to make global warming issues a priority because, as Gore said last year, “where public opinion goes, federal policy will follow.”